A thought-provoking re-examination of a misunderstood heroine of the Bible.
Shining the spotlight on Mary Magdalene.
Mirroring the title and scope of Albert Schweitzer’s The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906), Haag (The Tragedy of the Templars: The Rise and Fall of the Crusader States, 2013) pushes back legend and myth to uncover the real Mary Magdalene of the Christian Gospels. He also provides an exceptional overview of how she has been viewed by various cultures through the ages. As Haag points out several times, Mary Magdalene is far more important to the life story of Jesus—and far more prominent in that story—than Mary, the mother of Jesus. Yet Jesus’ mother has been exalted and venerated, while Mary Magdalene has been misunderstood and even reviled through the centuries. The author begins by examining the name Magdalene, noting that it does not derive from a place name but from the Aramaic term for “tower” and thus is a meaningful nickname given to Mary by Jesus. Haag follows Mary Magdalene’s presence (or possible presence) with Jesus throughout his known ministry, up to and including his entry into Jerusalem, trial, crucifixion, burial, and resurrection. The early Gnostic Church exalted Mary Magdalene as a spiritual partner to Jesus, perhaps even as his lover. Similarly, the Cathars of southern France saw her as the bride of Christ. In both cases, these groups were destroyed by the established church, and Mary’s reputation was fixed by the interpretation of Pope Gregory I, given in a sermon in 591, that she had been a prostitute. It was an interpretation that would never fully disappear. Despite hinting at many possibilities, Haag never says outright if he believes Mary Magdalene was a lover or wife of Jesus or what special role she had. But he makes it clear that she was of greater importance to his life and ministry than the church has ever recognized.
A thought-provoking re-examination of a misunderstood heroine of the Bible.Pub Date: May 24, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-205976-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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